Uhm . . .

Has someone told them what Achilles spent the Iliad doing? The people who name cars and military operations seem to be operating at the same intellectual level as the idiots who get paid to persuade us to spread "Icy Fire" or "Dusty Fucking Sunsets" on our lips.

Twitters and flowers

I had an interview for a nice position that would also pay nicely last Friday from a company that's been considering me for awhile, and they told me I'd hear from them this week. My heart has never fluttered over a job so much, not just because it's a lovely job but because it would suddenly pop me into an income and professional bracket I've never even touched on before.

What would I do with all that money? Probably nothing - save it for analyst school, real estate, kiddies, whatever - but the nothing is the whole point in a way. I won't have to do anything with it. I won't be obliged to spend it. I won't be obliged to go into debt. Ai-ee. Solvency. Long term solvency. And not in the sense of solvent abuse or anything either. Economic choice. Dear oh dear. As you may imagine, I'm all in a bloody twitter and will be until I hear one way or the other.

In the meantime, here's some pictures of local flowers and beetles:

Dreamtime

Heavens to Murgatroyd - a whole week sans blogging. Sorry. It was so busy, with hours and hours and hours of teaching and one frenzied day of interviews on Friday in Brussels. But Belgium busy isn't like Toronto busy. In Toronto when I was busy, it felt like time was being flushed down a powerful toilet. Here, it continues to float by. I've only been here two weeks. It feels like forever - and not in a bad way. In a kid way, like when five minutes seems like a reasonable amount of time to be told that you can play outside before dinner, and (sadly for me) a 1.40 hour class seems like a fucking eternity. The teaching is fun, though. I'd forgotten. Teenagers are fun to teach, in small groups that my superior lungs can yell down at least.

Some travel this weekend when the workload/busy load let off a bit - travel, hah - we went to a tajine place 45 minutes away where I had the most delicious shrimp tajine thing I've ever even heard of, and today we went to Bastogne - big groups of teachers. Nice. Sunny. Warm. Pretty. This is a rich and pleasant country.

So bizarre to think that in this well-regulated, rather adorable province, just 60 years ago conscripted men were blowing each other's brains out in droves - this is Battle of the Bulge Land - now, as the hackneyed but no less brilliant pun goes, the only bulges being battled are from all the pastries, chocolate and charchuterie. War is an inexcusably perverse abomination. People would do well to remember that better than they do.

Finished Artist of the Floating World - bloody brilliant. Neglect to read at the peril of your eyes' well-being.